Poland: Arrest after Russian artist and Putin critic killed

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A suspect has been detained in connection with the fatal shooting of a Russian national and subversive artist earlier this week, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday. 

The homicide of an artist who was critical of Russian, Soviet and Chechen leaders comes amid the heightened tensions amid President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

It's one of several killings targeting prominent opposition or dissident figures in NATO countries in recent years, from Poland to Lithuania, or Britain or Berlin. 

What did Tusk say about the arrest on Thursday? 

Tusk said that police and Poland's Internal Security Agency (ABW) coordinated in the arrest.

He said that the suspect was using a Georgian passport, and that investigations continued trying to find out where the orders for the killing might have hailed from. 

"Suspect involved in the murder of a Russian in Biala Podlaska detained by Lublin police and ABW! He is using a Georgian passport. The services are working to establish the mastermind," he wrote online. 

Tusk also said that the killing appeared to be a "political murder."

"If it was commissioned by Russia, then this is also a very serious matter with an international dimension," he said.

Police in Lublin said the seized passport belonged to a 36-year-old man. 

Thursday's arrest comes after two other Belarusian suspects were also detained, but not charged.

What do we know about the crime? 

Prosecutors have said that the victim, identified as Robert Kuzovkov and perhaps better known by his artistic pseudonym Semyon Skrepetski, was killed on Tuesday in Biala Podlaska — a town east of Warsaw, near the border to Ukraine 

He was shot five times, once in the head. The assailant shot and downed him, then approached to fire twice more at point-blank range. 

Earlier on Thursday, ⁠Deputy ​Minister of Foreign Affairs Wladyslaw Bartoszewski told Radio Zet that Chechens were "also potentially suspected," given the artist's past criticism of their leaders. 

Who was Semyon Skrepetski?

Skrepetsky was a visual artist who made a name for himself with his provocative caricatures of Putin, as well as Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

But he also directed his satire toward the Russian opposition, including with caricatures of Alexei Navalny.

Born in a village in Russia's Altai Republic, Skrepetsky had been living in exile in Poland since 2021. Poland's government has said it offered him a protective detail in the past but he declined.

Three days before he was killed, the artist had traveled to Berlin on Russia Day.

In Berlin, he staged a protest outside the Russian embassy holding an icon-like caricature of both Stalin and Putin.

A series of prominent Russian politicians, dissidents, activists and former spies have been killed in NATO countries during the Putin era — including but not limited to a Chechen rebel murdered in central Berlin in 2019 and former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal poisoned in Salisbury in England in 2018.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in such incidents. 

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Edited by: Zac Crellin